It seems you are missing some basic knowledge, which of course is partially fault of tutorials themselves simply just learning you to utilize basic mechanics and not going in depth on topics.

Can I interest you in one out of 100 steam guides for beginners?
How about TUTORIALS section right on this forum?
Would you like to see it in action? Perhaps one in 1000 of ES2 related videos on youtube.
I see most of your questions have reliable keywords which can be googled if the search bar on top does not strike your fancy.
Still missing it? Perhaps a link to first google result will satisfy you.

"Search the interent, it's outt there somewhere". Well that's not very insightful or welcoming, but I guess that wasn't the intent. I thought this was an appropriate forum for newcomers to seek out wisdom from the seasoned, but looks like I could be mistaken.

Is there some way to report troll posts like the one above, or is this an unmoderated forum? 

I am sorry for linking a beginner guide to you, I can see how that is directly related to the crushing weight of my ego under all those forum badges.

2. Are you aware of wormholes? Those are hidden paths between constelations that are unlocked by researching a tech in tier 3 scientific quadrant. They consume all your movement points but can push you great distances, so your enemies might be using them. Also fleets "popping and disappearing" might be because of cloaking, which allows ships to toggle visibility. You need to research anti-cloacking technology in the military quadrant to spot those. Also there are several ways to increase warp (out of starlanes) movement. There are 2 technologies in scientific quadrant that do this, also there are hero skills that greatly increase your warp speed. I managed to cross the whole galaxy within 1 turn with some heroes.

3. Victory is decided by 2 factors mostly: your weapon composition and your ships' position in battle. It is important though, that those two are tied together because different weapons perform better at different ranges. I think you should know the basics of energy/kinetic weapons (first better against fleets with hull plating and no shields and last are opposite). So I guess your main concern would be picking battle cards right, so your ships' position would play well with their design. There are 3 lanes (flotillas) in combat, the central main lane, the top lane and the bottom lane. In battle ships will shoot enemy in their lane first and if they kill it, they can switch to shooting at adjacent lanes, however side lanes can't shoot each other. Then there is another factor which is range and it is decided by battle cards for all three lanes. It is important that ships only start shooting when they are at their range, so in battle it will take them time to reach their firing position first and only then they'll start shooting. To get a grasp of how to win combat I suggest not using close-range battlecards, because what actually happens when you use them is your ships try to reach the short range and get shredded by enemy ships from afar. There are some good uses for close range cards but those are a bit more advanced and require better flotilla knowledge, which I can't explain in the text form. Also try to avoid using rockets at first, because they only work well if enemies have no Slugs (which can target and shoot down rockets before they reach you) or if you pair them with Swarm Missles so that Slugs get overwhelmed and your rockets can go through (swarms are unlocked in military quadrant). The good way to start will be getting some energy weapons on your attackers and slugs on your defenders and mix them in 2/1 or 3/1 ratio. Get some coordinators (at least 3) and a good number of attackers. You can skip armor on your attackers because coordinators and protectors attract fire and get hit instead. So make your attackers glass canons, upgrade their hulls (tier 3 empire quadrant for attackers and tier 4 for hunters) and get energy intensifiers in support slots and more weapons - make them little canons of death. Equip your protectors/coordinators with best armor, favoring shields, beacuse your only bane at medium and long range are enemy rockets and your slugs can protect you from them. If you go full lasers, then take trophies is a good starting battle card because all three flotillas have medium range preset, so your ships will utilize their weapons 100% wherever you place them. You can split your fleet between flotillas to get morale bonuses but remember to put at least 1 protector each lane along with attackers.

4. I guess I already answered it above.

5. You actually named quite a lot of ways to generate influence, don't you think? xD There is no OP way to get a lot of it investing nothing. Sometimes you get a bit lucky and find unique planet early which usually generate a lot of influence. You can get a good amount from exploring curiosities as well, that helps early. And in the later stages Museums are the way to go. If you are unhappy by that point then you are doing something wrong. If you want to avoid influence problems you can try playing Unfallen, they always gain a bunch.

6. Agreements are not super strong in general and are not worth it as a catch-up tool, but sometimes you have +99999 influence and those are a good way to dump some. 

7. They likely die out because you don't have enough food. That can happen when you conquer a system and it gets mutinous state which is a -75% food penalty so guys start dying unless you vacate some of them via spaceport or put some bigass food hero as a governor.

  @koxsos  yeah I agree in general but I haven't seen a single worthy combat guide and had to figure things out here as well
this is fine, I guess, no need to be negative

Captain Cobbs, mamarider, thanks for the  responses

I think if you have a game forum, it think it should be expected and even welcomed that new people will come here to seek direct advice from experienced players. It's great that there is a wealth of are player-generated resources, but at the same time it's not reasonable to expect players to scour through masses of unofficial content of varying quality before seeking insght. It certainly doesn't help a forum's growth when they first post makes receives a snide response from some wiht a VIP badge. Creates the impression that the joint is a snake pit. Yourr positive response refute that, and I see Kossus has edited out of his initial barbs. I'm appreciative and will refer back to this thread as I play tonight. 

So, regarding combat and ships, it sounds like editing and designing one's own ships isn't really an optional move. The game isn't going to automatically provide a variety of builds around the threee weapon types. Seems like at level 3 on the military branch, a player has to make an either-or choice between hyperium or or titanium-based weapons. I pick hyperium, then I'm locking into beam weapons, and that's what my default ship builds all are now. And the military tech tree has an insane number of support modules so players are tossed into the deep end quickly. This may simply not be the game for a player who's not interested enough in the war aspect of 4X to spend time kitting their on ships. 

Is there any way to know what techs other civ's have and what designs they're going with, beyond meeting them in the field of battle? 

As for wormholes, I know about them but even after researching the tech, I don't see them on the map around my civ. 

mamarider wrote:

5. You actually named quite a lot of ways to generate influence, don't you think? xD 

Sure, but they're happenstance based, not the bread-and-butter soruces to which I was referring. You have pretty ways to improve other yields, just not influence, at least not until getting pretty deep into the eexpnansion wedge fo the tech pie  I was wondering if I was missing something, because my inluence spheres were expanding more slowly than the AI. Doesn't sound like I did miss anything though, which is good to know

I guess it must have been food causing pop loss, but it didn't seem like it was affecting the Kalmat, who I assimilated from lava and ash planets. I was paying Lumeris, so it was pretty easy to keep everyone Ecstatic. 

Couple more questions you guys might indulge:

7)  I was trying to corral minor races onto specific systemsl, and removing Lumeris from them entirely. I figured that would help them increase their factions and generate some political diversity so it's not two-thirds pacifists and single digits everybody else (not arguing that Lumeris shouldn't be pacifists, mind you). Is this strategy worth bothering with? At one point I wanted Industrialist laws, but even with me growing out systems with 100% Kalmats, I do notice during the election that these systems still may only generate 1 Industrialist vote. I  also went after Industrialist leaders, but still no dent. 

8)  I researched Cultural Flexibility to flip some Riftborn systems that I've swallowed up in my influecne sphere. Thing is, their alliance wound up going to war with mine, and they keep forcing a truce and while I can easily declare war again, that doesn't get me to peace or cold war. Is there a way back to that?  Is my solutiion to getting out of a war/truce dichotomy to quit the alliance? 

koxsos wrote:

You complain answers in steam discussions are too in depth, yet you refuse to read a 101 guide provided to you and consider it trolling.

You say something similar to civilization wiki does not exist, yet you ignore the very existence of both official (fair enough not all that useful) and fanmade wiki.

I didn't say the Steam discussions are too in-depth. I said they were quick blurts that assume the poster knows the terms they're tossing out. Nor did , I say anything critical about Civopedia. I said Endless Space doesn't  have an equivalent. 

CaptainCobbs wrote:

You will not see wormholes if you set your galaxy to unique (1 constellation). Perhaps you did that.

1. You'd have to do some heavy vote manipulation and gerrymandering with your pops (Kalgeros and Lumeris aren't good population to get industrial support with, usually the robotic races are easier) if you want industrialist. The best way to do this is to just play United Empire, as they get crazy industrialist support.

Upon reflection, I should've continued numbering my questions as 7 & 8. I should go back and do that I guess. Think I will go back and edit that in....

Cap'n, it was Kalmats, the bandwidth-boosting race, not Kalgens, the happy-making race. A guide i read (and rest assured, I have actually consulted guides before and after posting here) said they were the only good way to get more bandwidth, so without even understanding hacking I dove head first into growing them because they lhave and Industrialist orientation. Turns hacking is kind of limited in its results, but I was hoping to at least boost IndustriThe advice the game gives is to increase industrial through system developments and colonization, both of which I've done earnestly. @mamarider made remarks that seem to confirm what I'm eperiencing: pacifist and militarist overwhelm the other ideologies.

My expereince with truces so far is that eventually the truce just goes back to war, and then another truce winds up being forced shortly afterwards. Endless shuffle.

mamarider wrote:

steveg700 wrote:

The game isn't going to automatically provide a variety of builds around the threee weapon types.

That is not actually true. Every time you reach a new tier in the military tree, you unlock some white "basic" weapon modules and defensive modules. Knowing the drill has more impact than sheer firepower in ES2, so you can beat AI with superior weapons with a cheese strategy, such as going heavy on Bombers and using Prudent Positions tactic, or using Cloacked Ambush module and going full Railguns or Slugs, with evasive maneuvers tactic. It is worth mentioning that shooting sidelanes is less effective than shooting straight, so you can do this: make a long range torpedo+swarms/beam fleet but squeeze 2-4 close range  attackers with some slugs. Put your long ranges mid lane and split attackers between sidelanes. If enemy splits its fleet in 3 lanes as well you will lose those kamikaze ships but it will weaken his overall efficiency because after he kills them he'd be forced to shoot sidelanes with a big number of his ships which means less damage. If he keeps fleet packed in 1 lane your little kamikaze ships will help to put down his main section without being damaged. And having many flotillas also gives you morale bonuses or negates penalties depanding on your opponents composition. See a lot of small ships? Research Blast Effect Battery and put it on coordinator. Not only it is specialized in killing swarming fleets, but it also increases chance to be targeted which is perfect for your coordinators. Manipulating aggro is very important as well. I sometimes use protectors and equip them with flotilla shields + adamantium jammers so they are not preffered over my coordinators and give bonuses to the whole flotilla. Once you start understanding how things work they become really interesting, so better not skip this part and get good at it.

Also try checking this guide
It is an alright one and covers several important moments

I actually am attracted to the idea of combat not just being roshambo between  (in historical 4X, archers/infantry/cav, in space 4X, missles/beams/kinetic), so this apeals to me. 

The thing I was commenting on, to which you replied, was that the game only provides one auto-build option for each ship type. Indeed, I just now realized that the game is not even auto-updating the auto-build design. I have to edit each ship type and then click the Auto-Design button. I don't think I love that. 

 But here's a real source of hair-pulling. I chose Hyperium Magnetics over Advanced Fusion Power. That would tend to mean I do better with a beam weapon design. But when I edit my build and click Auto-Design, it only loads out projectiles (basic torpedoes in the medium ships, basic slugs in the small ships). What is happening there? Why is it not putting any beam weapons--basic or improved--on the ship?  

steveg700 wrote:
But when I edit my build and click Auto-Design, it only loads out projectiles (basic torpedoes in the medium ships, basic slugs in the small ships). What is happening there? Why is it not putting any beam weapons--basic or improved--on the ship?

Auto-Design improves the chosen types of equipment, only. Keep in mind it doesn't switch to better stuff (using strategic ressources). In case you have white equipment, it will improve to better (if available) white equipment, as long as you don't switch to strategic (i. e. titanium/hyperium equipment) equipment before.

A nice practical feature would be a toggle for auto-designing with startegic resources. Then again, if it only swaps out same-for-same, then it still wouldn't pick a beam when the default is kinetic. 

Autoupgrading designs will increase their production and buyout costs, which is undesirable at some scenarios. In any case, you would rarely want that at all, be it single button press or each time new module is available. Manual design always suits your needs better.

It will take you some time 'till you reach the point where you can just place the party you want to senate with dust or influence. And maturing your party is a thing, because of political experience. Parties that win elections several times unlock progressively better special laws, that they can pass.

Thanks. Since behemoths have been brought up, let me go ahead and ask....What was the point of introducing? Did the game have a balance problem (or problems) that behemoths were intended to address? Or is it just filing a traditional expectation of space 4x games that there is some class of super-ship? 

(btw, I did watch a video about behemoths before posting)

Behemoths were introduced to make longer games more rewarding and to make tall defensive strategy with citadels a thing. At that time siege modules were insane and everyone used special sieging fleets instead of manpower supply modules. Supremacy was released alongside the balance patch that reworked ground battles and new preffered strat for taking huge protected systems became to raise manpower deployment level of your fleet with modules so that you can land thouthands of manpower in one killing blow. Citadels were meant as a counterplay to both sieging shenanigans with its unsiegable manpower and  to troop swarm shenanigans with free + 800mp and a lot more from extra techs. Also behemoths gave second wind to special nodes which you can mine resources from with the right modules. You can use them with +% fidsi modules to boost good systems or to build up new ones. You can use them for vision, but I prefer exploration ships for those purposes, if they have 3+ support modules. Stacking probe modules of 1 type increases total vision range, so having a scout as Horatio with 4 hyperium probes (or even 5 with the right tech from bottom tree) lets you see huge areas around those scout ships.

See, this is good stuff. This is understanding I wouldn't get from sifting through wikie and Youtube. I posit that human nteraction is an efficient way to convey data. :)

Manpower seems like a really muddled system that uses one term to cover multiple subsystems, and it seems like it's an area where the game would benefit from an in-game encyclopedia. Then again, I am really happy when strategy games include such concepts as a way to express practical limits in churning out units. LIke I said, the game suggests a lot of nuance, but taht is not serviced by a terse tooltip here and there.

Ons some of my leaders, I see skills that raise "deployment limit" and some that raise "capacity", and a skill that mentions both. I'm thinking the deployment iraise the potential amount that can be generated per turn (whatever limit that might be), and the capacity is the hard cap on how much can be generated. Whether these bonuses apply to systems for buildup purposes or on fleets to beef up invasion forces, I'm not so sure. 

Now, I'm sure how any of that relates to improving ground troops. I'm currently working under the supposition that I wasn't squinting enough to see a decimal point in one of the resources. I've actually given up on that now and have begun burning them on ship upgrades and improvements, it'll be a bit before I can try again. 

I'm also not sure how manpower ties into flee-size limits, if at all. 

Deployment limits are actual ground battle limits. You got maybe 1000 manpower on a fleet, but in one turn you can only deploy e.g. 400 of them and got 600 in reserve. Heros upgrading this limit can make ground battles faster by getting more men down.

The hard cap was right, but not for production. It can improve your empire hard cap on how much men you can "store".

If you improve your ground battle units it has a manpower cost symbolized by three white people next to each other.

Ships don t have to have full manpower, but they deal less dmg with less men and you need manpower to invade planets.

steveg700 wrote:

Manpower seems like a really muddled system that uses one term to cover multiple subsystems, and it seems like it's an area where the game would benefit from an in-game encyclopedia. Then again, I am really happy when strategy games include such concepts as a way to express practical limits in churning out units. LIke I said, the game suggests a lot of nuance, but taht is not serviced by a terse tooltip here and there.

Ons some of my leaders, I see skills that raise "deployment limit" and some that raise "capacity", and a skill that mentions both. I'm thinking the deployment iraise the potential amount that can be generated per turn (whatever limit that might be), and the capacity is the hard cap on how much can be generated. Whether that's on systems for recruitment purposes or for fleets to deploy in ground combat, I'm not so sure. 

Now, I'm sure how any of that relates to improving ground troops. I'm currently working under the supposition that I wasn't squinting enough to see a decimal point in one of the resources. I've actually given up on that now and have begun burning them on ship upgrades and improvements, it'll be a bit before I can try again. 

I'm also not sure how manpower ties into flee-size limits, if at all. 

Manpower in ES2 is used for forming system defenses (System Manpower), for forming ship crew (lets call it Ship Manpower ) and Empire Manpower stock or better say stored manpower -.

So this is your Empire Manpower stock. Manpower is generated mainly by this building which is a basic one for all new colonies:

So what it does is it converts 10% of your system growth into manpower, slightly crippling your food generation. When your Empire Manpower stock is full, you don't lose those 10% food. The rate of conversion can be further increased with several buildings. There are other ways of gaining manpower, but I won't go into details here.

All excessive manpower goes to your Empire Manpower stock. Manpower becomes excessive when your systems' defenses are full and all ships orbiting yours or allied systems are full. The first one you can check in the system screen like here:


You can check your fleet manpower here:

It is worth noting that every time your system defences suffer losses or you aquire new systems, those systems would automatically drain manpower from your Empire Manpower stock. There is no way of stopping that interaction. Refill rate can be increased by several means and is indicated like this -
Not to be confused with this one  which increases max cap of System Manpower for a given system.

Every ship has its max manpower which is determined by its design (manpower modules increase this amount), unlocked technologies and hull size:

Ships regenerate manpower from your Empire Manpower stock when they orbit allied or your own systems. It is also inevitable. Refill rate can be increased by some perks and traits.

Manpower Deployment Limit or MDL determines how much troops can participate in a single round of invasion. MDL can be increased with technologies and by using manpower modules on your ships and is used when conquering systems by force.

So if you invade a system while having four O2G Delivery Modules on your ships orbiting that system, you would use 100 more troops in a single round.


 MDL (DEF) increases it only if your system is being invaded.

I think I've covered the basics. Feel free to ask if you still have questions.

mamarider wrote:

Manpower in ES2 is used for forming system defenses (System Manpower), for forming ship crew (lets call it Ship Manpower ) and Empire Manpower stock or better say stored manpower -.

I think I've covered the basics. Feel free to ask if you still have questions.

Wow! IMHO - this should be released in to separated guide. This is the best explanation with essential visuals for the term "Manpower" in ES2 I ever met. 

Edit: 

I suppose the only thing missing here is "enrollment rate" term. which can be helpfull to know choosing some system development upgrades that can accelerate this value.

Evgenopolis wrote:

I suppose the only thing missing here is "enrollment rate" term. which can be helpfull to know choosing some system development upgrades that can accelerate this value.

I am not sure what that means myself. I heard it increases the amount of conscription you can get with Draft ground battle tactic. Never tested it myself though.

mamarider wrote:

Evgenopolis wrote:

I suppose the only thing missing here is "enrollment rate" term. which can be helpfull to know choosing some system development upgrades that can accelerate this value.

Let me echo the sentiment that you provided a great explanation

I am not sure what that means myself. I heard it increases the amount of conscription you can get with Draft ground battle tactic. Never tested it myself though.

Let me second the sentiment that the mini-guide was pretty awesome. It was very helpful to actually see where the indicators reside. Many guides speak at conceptual level, leaving the reader to determine how to put theory into practice. 

As for "enrollment", at https://endless-space-2.fandosm.com/wiki/Luxury_Resource  it says this regarding the Dark Glitter enrollment property:

"Enrollment Rate" is a strange and unique mechanic that got introduced in a later balance patch to make Dark Glitter more compelling. At the time of this writing, it exists on nothing else in the game. What it appears to do is to generate additional manpower "out of thin air" if your system is invaded - the closest thing this is similar to is the "Draft" defense strategy which converts a pop unit into manpower (this also stacks with "Enrollment Rate")."

I realize I'm late to the party and I sincerely apologize for it but I'd love to offer some help if I can, starting with your first posted questions:

1) Most basic thing: I know the game has tutorials, but even after all these years, there's no official reference akin to a Civopedia as far as I can tell. Not even a legend to look up all the tiny little symbols. Luxuries are represented by uniersally-wite little icons, and often there's not even a mouseover (like on the Population screen that's buried in the Senate Screen).[/quote] 

Regarding the luxuries and what they do, the easiest place to get that information that I've found is in the game located in the Economy window (F3 shortcut by default), which has a small section on the top right:

This will update as you discover new luxuries in the game and you can hover over each one to see its effect on system development. 

2) Enemy fleets seem to pop in and out of line of sight at will. I'm in a war with the Riftborn, and they had a fleet that I can't keep track of. They don't even have a star lane connecting to my empire, and I'm blockading their nearest system, but somehow they were able to get a fleet of ships on systems that would take me 20+ turns to get to if I were just relying of laneless free travel.

Travel without a starlane can occur quickly with two things: wormholes which will appear as swirly white lines between systems but only AFTER you research the relevent technology which is Autonomous Materials, located in the third tier of the Science and Exploration quadrant (lower quadrant); the other option is through use of a Seeker hero ( ) which has a skill located here which increases "free movement" which is movement off of a star lane, which makes traveling between systems without wormholes or a starlane much faster.

Travel between systems without a wormhole or starlane is accomplished by unlocking the Baryonic Shielding technology in the second tier of Science and Exploration. 

3) A battle pops up and the colors seem balanced. Fleets are the same size. The color wheel is about 50/50. Battles over, my fleet has been wiped out summarily. If they had vastly superior tech, seems like the color wheel wouldn't not given me those odds.

 The combat system in ES2 takes a lot to figure out and can be difficult to really piece together. Just trying to explain this answer alone could take an entire guide. To be as succinct as I can while hopefully still answering your question: There are a large number of variables that go into combat: weapon types and ranges, defense types, tactics chosen by each party, flotilla set up (the three 'lanes' in each combat) and how all of those interact together. The best advice I can offer to newer players is to always check the "advanced" window option at the bottom to bring up a more detailed overview of how the fight will look, choose a tactics card that emphasizes your weapon of choice (some good basics are 'turtle' if you're using projectiles, 'power to shields' for missiles and beams and 'take trophies' for lasers. This sets each weapon type at its 'optimal' range. I would be happy to go into much more detail about the combat system with you over a Discord conversation if you want. 

4) Okay, this one really blows my mind and I definitely don't get how this is fun. Once a fleet jumps into a star lane, it's commited, If a stronger fleet pops up at the desitnation, then you're on a cattle chute to death. If an enemy pops up behind you, you can't reverse. This isn't a problem itself, but it takes multiple turns to travel a lane, and of course it's a problem when incoming enemies are jsut popping in and out of detection. Slow rate of movement and sudden appearance/disappearance of enemies makes for no ability to react, much less plan. If there are techs to mitigate either speed or detection ranges, I've managed to miss them.

The vision range of your fleets is mostly affected by hero skills (the Seeker is again best at this with the same skill that increases your free movement, it also increases your 'vision range) as well as through probes. More advanced probes (those made from Hyperium (cream colored) and Titanium (blue colored) strategic resources have larger vision ranges which increases the detection range of your ships. 

Faster movement is largely accomplished through hero skills and which engines you put on your ships. There are a few sentate laws (mostly in the Scientists policies) that also affect movement. 

5) There seems to be no bread-and-butter means of producing influence. And by "breat-and-butter" I mean something that can replicated and scaled, not relying on happenstance like recruiting heroes with certain skills or getting a boost from exploration. I eventually unlocked the National Museum, but that's a levle 3 tech and that requires happy citizens. The closest thing I've found is specializing planets in influence.

Influence is largely generated by unique planets (planets with a white ring outside the normal white dot icon on the star map), hero skills (which as you said can be a matter of getting the right heroes) and some technologies which are located in the 'Empire Development' tree (left quadrant) in the lower half of that tree. Other options involve using some luxury resources in your system development (Eden Incense which looks like a lotus flower icon). Influence is hard to generate by design because it is arguably the most powerful resource in the game. 

6) I signed a research agreement, which apparently siphons influence from the empire and converts into some amount of science. I guess it's per citizen, so my 150 pops basically wound up sucking me dry in a couple turns. I realize the agreement is insanely impossible to sustain, so i want to cancel, but to do that I have to actually have influence to spend. Wha....?

Yeah...about that. Generally speaking any kind of trade or science agreement is going to bleed you dry. They will automatically cancel when you can't sustain them anymore but my best advice is to simply avoid them except in very specific scenarios where you can afford to sustain them. 

7) Population units die off without providing information as to why they're dying, other than "affinity". If I'm able to colonize a planet, I tend to think it's actually possible to habitate it. If a species has an affinity for a specific climate, that's fine, but there's no explanation of what the favored climes are. Pretty annoying when you get a minor race that I would like to see propigate.

The most common reason for population death is a lack of food in that system. This can occur because you're taking a new colony and this system is feeding the new colony (this will be denoted  in two places, the first is in the system you're building a colony in (picture on the left), while the second is in the system that is feeding the colony (picture on the right):

The food icon with the arrow in the right picure tells you that this colony is feeding another colony. This actually takes a SUBSTANTIAL amount of food from your colony and can quickly lead to population death if you don't watch it. 

The 'affinity' you're seeing is actually a set of bonuses you get for having a certain amount of each type of population in your Empire which is found on the Senate screen (F2 Shortcut by default) in the lower right corner. If you select the 'population details' button at the bottom, it'll bring up a window showing you what bonuses you get for having certain numbers of each race in your empire, usual benchmarks are 10, 20 and 50 (this is found in the upper right of that window). 

I realize this is A LOT of information to take in, I tried to be concise, sorry. I'd be happy to help further if I can. 

Good luck and welcome to the community!